Beaux and Belles of England | Page 8

I
often wept to see her weep; I tried all my little skill to soothe her, but in
vain; the first shock was followed by calamities of a different nature.
The scheme in which my father had embarked his fortune failed, the
Indians rose in a body, burnt his settlement, murdered many of his
people, and turned the produce of their toil adrift on the wide and
merciless ocean. The noble patrons of his plan deceived him in their
assurances of marine protection, and the island of promise presented a
scene of barbarous desolation. This misfortune was rapidly followed by
other commercial losses; and to complete the vexations which pressed

heavily on my mother, her rash husband gave a bill of sale of his whole
property, by the authority of which we were obliged to quit our home,
and to endure those accumulated vicissitudes for which there appeared
no remedy.
It was at this period of trial that my mother was enabled to prove, by
that unerring touchstone, adversity, who were her real and disinterested
friends. Many, with affected commiseration, dropped a tear--or rather
seemed to drop one--on the disappointments of our family; while others,
with a malignant triumph, condemned the expensive style in which my
father had reared his children, the studied elegance which had
characterised my mother's dress and habitation, and the hospitality,
which was now marked by the ungrateful epithet of prodigal luxuriance,
but which had evinced the open liberality of my father's heart.
At this period my brother William died. He was only six years of age,
but a promising and most lovely infant. His sudden death, in
consequence of the measles, nearly deprived my mother of her senses.
She was deeply affected; but she found, after a period of time, that
consolation which, springing from the bosom of an amiable friend,
doubly solaced her afflictions. This female was one of the most
estimable of her sex; she had been the widow of Sir Charles Erskine,
and was then the wife of a respectable medical man who resided at
Bristol.
In the society of Lady Erskine my mother gradually recovered her
serenity of mind, or rather found it soften into a religious resignation.
But the event of her domestic loss by death was less painful than that
which she felt in the alienation of my father's affections. She frequently
heard that he resided in America with his mistress, till, at the expiration
of another year, she received a summons to meet him in London.
Language would but feebly describe the varying emotions which
struggled in her bosom. At this interesting era she was preparing to
encounter the freezing scorn, or the contrite glances, of either an
estranged or a repentant husband; in either case her situation was
replete with anticipated chagrin, for she loved him too tenderly not to
participate even in the anguish of his compunction. His letter, which
was coldly civil, requested particularly that the children might be the
companions of her journey. We departed for the metropolis.
I was not then quite ten years old, though so tall and formed in my

person that I might have passed for twelve or thirteen. My brother
George was a few years younger. On our arrival in London we repaired
to my father's lodgings in Spring Gardens. He received us, after three
years' absence, with a mixture of pain and pleasure; he embraced us
with tears, and his voice was scarcely articulate. My mother's agitation
was indescribable; she received a cold embrace at their meeting--it was
the last she ever received from her alienated husband.
As soon as the first conflicts seemed to subside, my father informed my
mother that he was determined to place my brother and myself at a
school in the vicinity of London; that he purposed very shortly
returning to America, and that he would readily pay for my mother's
board in any private and respectable family. This information seemed
like a death-blow to their domestic hopes. A freezing, formal,
premeditated separation from a wife who was guiltless of any crime,
who was as innocent as an angel, seemed the very extent of decided
misery. It was in vain that my mother essayed to change his resolution,
and influence his heart in pronouncing a milder judgment: my father
was held by a fatal fascination; he was the slave of a young and artful
woman, who had availed herself of his American solitude, to
undermine his affections for his wife and the felicity of his family.
This deviation from domestic faith was the only dark shade that marked
my father's character. He possessed a soul brave, liberal, enlightened,
and ingenuous. He felt the impropriety of his conduct. Yet, though his
mind was strongly organised, though his understanding was capacious,
and his sense of honour delicate